{"answers":{"affected":"","exploited":"There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-98538 in the wild and no public exploit code.","fix":"Apply the vendor's patch.","what":"CVE-2026-98538 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 18 Oct 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim."},"fix_prompt":"Check this codebase for CVE-2026-98538 and fix it if it is affected.\n\nWhat it is: CVE-2026-98538 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 18 Oct 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.\nExploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-98538 in the wild and no public exploit code.\n\nAffected product: Linux. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.\n\nTask:\n1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.\n2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.\n3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.\n4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.\n5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.\n\nReference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-98538/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-98538/index.md)","id":"CVE-2026-98538","markdown":"https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-98538/index.md","name":"CVE-2026-98538","record":{"aliases":["AZL-108635","BELL-CVE-2026-98538","DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98538","GHSA-m444-q4wx-jpmh","UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98538"],"analysis":{"component_type":"kernel","fix_type":"patch","impacts":["denial_of_service"],"network_reachable":"adjacent_or_local","non_default_config":false,"product_category":"Linux kernel","requires_auth":"none","summary":"A local attacker can cause a denial of service via soft lockups in the Linux kernel writeback subsystem by triggering quadratic time complexity during inode cleanup.","user_interaction":"not_required","vuln_class":"denial_of_service"},"analysis_generated_by":"qwen3.8-flash-next","assigner":"Linux","cpe":[],"cvss":{"score":null,"severity":null,"source":null,"vector":null,"version":null},"cwes":[],"description":"In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:\n\nwriteback: bound cleanup_offline_cgwb() rescans by rotating scanned inodes\n\ncleanup_offline_cgwb() prepares at most WB_MAX_INODES_PER_ISW inodes\nper call and is called again until the dying wb is drained, but every\ncall walks wb-\u003eb_attached and then wb-\u003eb_dirty_time from the same end.\nInodes already prepared (they stay on the list with I_WB_SWITCH set\nuntil the switch worker runs) and inodes that cannot be switched\n(I_FREEING, I_WILL_FREE, !SB_ACTIVE, DAX, already on the target wb)\nstay where they are, so each pass rescans a growing run of them under\nwb-\u003elist_lock and a full drain is quadratic in the number of inodes on\nthe list. With ~17M inodes attached to one dying cgwb we saw this end\nin soft lockups, with CPUs reported stuck for 21-48s.\n\nWalk both lists from the oldest end and move every scanned inode to\nthe newest end, so the next pass starts where the previous one stopped\nand the drain becomes linear. b_attached is unordered, so nobody sees\nthe reorder there. b_dirty_time is ordered by dirtied_when, but the\noldest unscanned inode stays at the end move_expired_inodes() picks\nfrom, sync takes the whole list regardless of order, and prepared\ninodes leave the list as soon as the switch work runs and get a new\ndirtied_time_when on the new wb anyway, so the only inodes left out of\norder are the ones that can never switch (DAX), and only on the dying\nwb.","ecosystems":[],"exploits":{"exploitdb":0,"first_seen":null,"github_poc":0,"max_poc_stars":null,"metasploit":0,"nuclei":0,"refs":[],"tier":"none_known"},"has_fix":true,"headline":"writeback: bound cleanup_offline_cgwb() rescans by rotating scanned inodes","id":"CVE-2026-98538","indexable":true,"kev":null,"kind":"cve","links":{"ecosystem":null,"product":null,"products":[],"type":"denial_of_service","year":"2026"},"n_packages":0,"n_references":6,"next":{"headline":"fs/ntfs3: use d_instantiate_new() in ntfs_create_inode() and murder syzbot's \"WARNING in do_new_mount\" saga","id":"CVE-2026-98539"},"packages":[],"prev":{"headline":"workqueue: Fix NULL current_pwq deref in flush dependency check","id":"CVE-2026-98537"},"products":["Linux"],"published":"2026-10-18","related":[],"sources":[{"class":"attribution","licence":"CVE Terms of Use (MITRE)","name":"CVE List","prefix":"CVE"}],"ssvc":{"automatable":null,"exploitation":null,"technical_impact":null},"state":"PUBLISHED","updated":"2026-10-19","vendors":["Linux"]},"summary":"A local attacker can cause a denial of service via soft lockups in the Linux kernel writeback subsystem by triggering quadratic time complexity during inode cleanup.","url":"https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-98538/"}